New York Burning

by Jill Lepore

  34. NYWJ, January 5, 1736. In a separate case, Van Zandt was later indicted for attempted rape—Goebel and Naughton, Law Enforcement, p. 621.

  35. Stokes, Iconography, 4:545.

  36. Greenberg, Crime and Law Enforcement, pp. 72–73.

  37. Moglen, “Settling the Law,” pp. 194–95. Hunter to Lords of Trade, March 14, 1713, and June 23, 1712, Docs. Col. NY, 5:356–57, 339–41. Scott, “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712.” See also the biographical entries for May Bickley and Jacob Regnier in SCJ, vol. 3.

  38. On Clarke’s support of Bickley, see SCJ, 3:23.

  39. On the role of the grand jury, see Goebel and Naughton, Law Enforcement, chap. 6; SCJ, 1:141–245.

  40. John H. Langbein, “The Historical Origins of the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination at Common Law,” Michigan Law Review 92 (1993–94): 1047–85.

  41. Leonard W. Levy and Lawrence H. Leder, “ ‘Exotic Fruit’: The Right Against Compulsory Self-Incrimination in Colonial New York,” WMQ 20 (1963): 7. John H. Langbein, “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial: A View from the Ryder Sources,” University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983): 1–136; Stephan Landsman, “The Rise of the Contentious Spirit: Adversary Procedure in Eighteenth-Century England,” Cornell Law Review 75 (1990). Langbein writes, “Of the main themes of the modern law, only the hearsay rule is stated recognizably” (p. 431), but even that is given many exceptions. On the lack of any real “law of evidence” in colonial New York, see Goebel and Naughton, Law Enforcement, pp. 628–29. See Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (London, 1741; Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), and esp. Intro. by editor Malvin R. Zirker, p. liii.

  42. NYWJ, November 25, 1734.

  43. After 1737, debtors were spared the dungeon and sent to the garret instead. If the debtor’s prison and apartments in the garret were squalid, they were at least well lit and well ventilated; each apartment had one window, and the common debtor’s prison had six. The cellar prison was much darker, damper, and closed. City records are full of complaints about its inadequacy. As early as 1697 the sheriff asked the Supreme Court justices to motion “to the city the insufficiency of the City Hall and prison.” In 1730 the legislature mandated improvements: “it appearing there is an Absolute Necessity not only to repair but to Enlarge the said Prisons and Gaols.” And in 1737 the city’s Common Council ordered “the Said Gaols to be Inspected and direct the same to be sufficiently repaired and Amended with all needfull and Necessary Reparations and Amendments”—October 17, 1730, Col. Laws of NY, 2:645; MCC, 4:362, January 17, 1737; Smith, Jr., History, 1:209. Cash, when caught, “confessed her only design was to get out of Gaol.” She was ordered stripped to the waist and “whipped by the Publick Whipper Eleven Lashes on the Naked back”—Mayor’s Court, May 1, 1733. See, e.g., an order paying the blacksmith “for Iron Shekells, hand Cuffs, & work done to the Prison” and another bill for “Staples” on July 15, 1731, and August 7, 1735—MCC, 4:61, 267.

  44. Pearse himself also appeared before the Supreme Court during the April term; he was sued by George Cummings (“Chief Justice James DeLancey’s Docket, 1733–1756,” DeLancey Papers, MCNY). See references to Captain Vincent Pearse v. George Cummings, in James Alexander, “Supreme Court Register, 1721–1742,” James Alexander Papers, NYHS. See also JA to [Joseph Murray?], March 25, 1741, James Alexander Papers, Box 1, folder 5; and JA to Vincent Pearse, March 23, 1741, Box 3, folder 3. Alexander served as Pearse’s attorney and Murray, apparently, represented Cummings. It appears that Pearse v. Cummings was first heard before the Admiralty Court on April 17, 1741 (both Horsmanden and Alexander were present), and then appealed. See Admiralty Court Records, James Alexander Papers, NYHS, Box 53, folder 1.

  45. See Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, esp. Intro.

  46. For a specific description of the site of the gallows, see David Grim, “Notes on the City of New York,” MS, NYHS. But note the discrepancies between Grim and Horsmanden. Grim says Hughson and Caesar were gibbeted in different parts of town; Horsmanden says they were next to each other.

  47. Albert W. Alschuler, “Symposium on Coercion: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Coercion, Exploitation and the Law: II. Coerced Confessions: Constraint and Confession,” Denver University Law Review 74 (1997): 957–78. Rex v. Warwickshall quoted on p. 968, from 168 Eng. Rep. 234, 255. Levy and Leder, “ ‘Exotic Fruit,’ ” pp. 13–15.

  48. On Mills’s dentistry, see NYWJ, January 6, 1735. On his career as jailkeeper, see NYECM, 2:104.

  Chapter Four

  1. NYWJ, May 31, June 8 and 15, 1741.

  2. Journal of the Assembly, I: 823–24, November 13, 1741. Smith, Jr., History, 2:58. Moore would have served under the charge of the court clerk, George Clarke, Jr. The latter’s position was, effectively, a sinecure awarded to him by his father, one of many offices he held for which he provided almost no service—Stokes, Iconography, 4:557. On court clerks, see SCJ, 1:136–38; Hamlin and Baker conclude, regarding the earlier period, “No matter from what point of view the Supreme Court records of the years 1691–1704 are considered, those who wrote them down, transcribed them, or entered them in books, did a poor job.” Horsmanden himself did know shorthand. In 1734, he mentioned in a letter to Colden, “My Short hand Book was lent to a Gentn”—DH to CC, January 5, 1735, LPCC, 2:97. CC to DH, July 29, 1742, LPCC, 8:288–89. See also Horsmanden’s shorthand of a letter from Rip Van Dam to William Cosby, December 15, 1733, Horsmanden Papers, NYHS.

  3. Proposals for Printing by Subscription, A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy (New York, 1742).

  4. JLC, I:794, November 26, 1741. The Supreme Court minutes for the years 1691–1740 and 1750–81 survive. Those for 1691–1704 are transcribed and annotated in SCJ, vol. 2. Originals of the minutes from 1704–40 and 1750–81 are in the County Clerk’s office and have also been microfilmed: “Minute Books of the Supreme Court of Judicature,” microfilm copy at Queens College Historical Documents Collection, Rolls SC1-SC8.

  5. Clarke quoted in Smith, Jr., Memoirs, 2:41.

  6. Richard Bradley to Everett Wendell, April 6, 1725, Richard Bradley Letters, Misc. MSS., NYHS.

  7. Thomas D. Morris, “Slaves and the Rules of Evidence in Criminal Trials,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 68 (1993): 1209.

  8. “An Act for the more effectual preventing and punishing the Conspiracy of Negro and other slaves, for the better regulating them and for repealing the Acts herein mentioned relating hereto,” Col. Laws of NY, 2:679–88.

  9. “The King v. Quack a Negroman” and “The King v. Coffee a Negroman,’ CO 5/1094, PRO. Horsmanden’s version of Fortune’s testimony is longer than the original courtroom minutes because Horsmanden included details from Fortune’s May 23 grand jury interrogation, details the court clerk found irrelevant and failed to include in his minutes from Quack and Cuffee’s trial on May 29. There is only one detail in the minutes that Horsmanden bothered to delete in his Journal: the reference to black Freemasons.

  10. On June 27, 1741, Adam (Murray) confessed that in 1738 Hughson lived “upon the Dock next Door to Silvester the Cooper.” The cooper Francis Silvester is listed on the 1734 tax list, residing in the South Ward, twelve buildings away from Daniel Horsmanden. Hughson does not appear on the 1734 list, and probably did not live in the city at that time. Davis (Rumor of Revolt, p. 3) and others say the Geneva Club was formed in 1736, because in a footnote in his Journal, Horsmanden wrote: “it happened about Five or Six Years ago.” But Horsmanden added the footnotes not in 1741, during the trials, but in 1742 or 1743, as he prepared the Journal for publication.

  11. Lodgemaster David Provost, Jr., was the son of David Provost, brother of Samuel Provost, James Alexander’s wife’s first husband. Mary Alexander also had a son named David Provost; he served in Gooch’s regiment in Jamaica. On the lodgemaster Provost, see David M. McGregor, “David Provoost, Jr., of New York, Master of a Lodge in Georgia in 1739,” Tra
nsactions of the American Lodge of Research 2 (1936): 373–76.

  12. NYG, November 28, 1737, August 8, 1737, January 31, 1738, February 14, 1738. NYWJ, January 24, 1738, February 13, 1738. The case for Horsmanden’s authorship of the essays in the Gazette is supported by the similarity of language—the language of “impudence”— with which he referred to the 1738 black Freemasons in the footnote in his Journal, reporting that the city’s blacks had “the Impudence to assume the Style and Title of Free Masons, in imitation of a Society here” (Horsmanden believed that after the whipping of Caesar, Cuffee, and Prince, “the Negroes may be supposed to have declined their Pretensions to this Title”). Zabin briefly discusses the 1738 Masonic scandal, placing it in the context of contested gender relations, in “Places of Exchange,” pp. 191–96.

  13. Smith, Jr., History, 2:34.

  14. On the constable’s oath, and jury withdrawal and verdict more generally, see Goebel and Naughton, Law Enforcement, pp. 669–79.

  15. On petty treason and burning, see Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 121. On 1712, see Scott, “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712.”

  16. NYWJ, May 31, 1741.

  17. NYWJ, June 19, 1738. Grim, “Notes on the City of New York.”

  18. The burning of Quack and Cuffee was watched outside the city as well. See, e.g., the Boston Weekly News-Letter, June 11, 1741.

  19. Elizabeth Colden DeLancey to CC, June 1, 1741, LPCC, 8:265.

  20. Ibid., 8:266. Elizabeth DeLancey did not give his name, or indicate whether he was already in jail.

  21. Ibid., 8:265.

  22. Sarah, a twenty-four-year-old “Mullatto Servant Woman” who ran away from English merchant Joseph Reade in 1732, spoke “good English and some Dutch.” John Henricus, “a Lusty Young Negro Man” who ran away from Matthew Norris in 1727, spoke “very good English and Welch”—NYG, November 13, 1732; NYEP, December 17, 1744; NYG, August 28, 1727. On languages spoken among New York’s blacks, see Medford et al., “The Transatlantic Slave Trade to New York City: Sources and Routing of Captives,” World Archaeological Conference 4 (1999), unpublished paper. On languages spoken by runaways, see Kruger, “Born to Run.” Using a sample of 194 runaway slave ads from 1726 to 1814, she finds forty that specify linguistic abilities: fourteen spoke English well, five spoke it poorly, six spoke no English at all, and fifteen were bilingual (p. 86). On Gã, and on Akan as a lingua franca, see Thornton, “The Coromantees,” p. 165.

  23. Hamilton, Gentleman’s Progress, pp. 40–41.

  24. NYCCP, 74:54, 55.

  25. Margreta de Grazia, “Sanctioning Voice: Quotation Marks, the Abolition of Torture, and the Fifth Amendment,” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 10 (1992): 545–66.

  26. For Kerry’s mark, see “Deposition. Margaret Sarinbirr alias Keary,” May 8, 1741, 74-35b-4; for Price’s mark, see “Deposition. Arthur Price,” May 7, NYCCP, 74-36b(1)-v; for Mary Burton’s mark, see “Deposition. Mary Burton,” June 25, 1741, 74-84a(2)-r and the addendum dated June 27, 1741, 74-84a(2)-v; for the lack of marks on slave confessions, see, e.g., “Confession. Wan, a negro belonging to Peter Lowe,” June 18, 1741, 74:66-v, and “Confession of Othello,” July 12, 1741, 74-121b-v. For arrest warrants signed by Horsmanden, see, e.g., “Warrant for the commitment of Sarah Hughson, single woman,” May 6, 1741,” NYCCP, 35-a-r; “Warrant for the commitment of Elizabeth, wife of John Roome,” May 8, 1741, NYCCP, 74-36a-r; and “Warrant for arrest of John, Cambridge, Caesar, and Guise,” May 30, 1741, NYCCP, 74:49a.

  27. The original of Jack’s confession is in very poor condition but Horsmanden’s signature appears on it—e-mail from James Folts to the author, July 13, 2004.

  28. NYWJ, November 4, 1734.

  29. Katz, Brief Narrative, pp. 59–60, 65, 69, 78, 99.

  30. Pennsylvania Gazette, June 18, 1741.

  31. Smith, Jr., Memoirs, 2:40.

  32. On Johnson, see NYECM, 2:236.

  33. On the blurring of the genres of history, journalism, fiction, and memoir, see Hunter, Before Novels, esp. chaps. 7 and 14. Horsmanden’s Journal might also be placed in a genre John J. Richetti calls the “criminal biography”: “The criminal of popular eighteenth-century narrative moves in a world which is brutal and degrading, but which is still the medieval one of spirits, witches, the devil, and the ubiquitous operations of Providence” — Richetti, Popular Fiction Before Richardson, p. 34.

  34. NYWJ, August 26, 1734.

  35. NYG, August 12, 1728.

  36. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 4.

  37. This account of Williams, and all quotations, are taken from Vincent Carretta, “Who Was Francis Williams?” Early American Literature 38 (2003): 213–37.

  38. David Hume, “Of National Characters,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Edinburgh, 1741).

  39. In 1724, young Francis Williams fell into a fistfight with a white colonist named William Brodrick. Brodrick called Williams a “black dog”; Williams called him a “white dog.” Williams ripped Brodrick’s shirt; Brodrick punched him in the mouth. Williams threatened to bring Brodrick to trial, and “said he was as good a man as ever stood on Brodrick’s legs; that he did not stand upon the act of this country, that exempts him from such trial as other negroes.” When Brodrick petitioned the court for remedy, a bill was drafted “for reducing Francis Williams, a free negro, to the same state of trial and evidence as other negroes,” in which state he would no longer be allowed to testify against a white man. The provision was not passed, but it was eventually folded into Jamaica’s 1730 “Act for the better regulating Slaves, and rendering free Negroes and Mulattoes more useful.” Williams sent a petition to London, requesting an appeal. In 1732, it was granted.

  Chapter Five

  1. At the stake on May 30, Quack said that “Mary Burton had spoke the Truth,” but neither he nor Cuffee supplied any details of the scene at Hughson’s.

  2. NYG, December 10, 1733. Comfort’s house and estate are in the same location in the West Ward in both the 1730 and the 1734 tax lists.

  3. This discussion of the city’s water supply borrows from Diane Galusha, Liquid Assets: A History of New York City’s Water System (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2002), pp. 11–13; Gerard T. Koeppel, Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Nelson Manfred Blake, Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United States (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1956); NYECM, 2:137–41; and Edward Wegman, The Water-Supply of the City of New York, 1658–1895 (New York, 1896), pp. 1–6.

  4. Silvester owned four slaves at his death in 1769, and probably had some in 1741, although none was accused in the conspiracy—“The Personal Estate of Francis Sylvester,” 1769, “Inventories of Estates, NYC and Vicinity, 1717–1844,” NYHS.

  5. New York Supreme Court of Judicature Minute Book, March 13, 1733–October 23, 1739, County Clerk’s Office, New York City. There are three generations of Lancaster Symeses in the records of early New York, including one who lived in the East Ward in 1730, where he owned two houses assessed together at £20. He does not appear on the 1734 tax list. The man Hughson accused was probably the mariner named Lancaster Symes, not his father, a merchant, or his grandfather.

  6. MCC, 4:423–24, April 13, 1738. Stokes, Iconography, 4:556–57. After 1754, the Broadway Market was called the Oswego Market.

  7. The militia lists can be found in Doc. Hist. NY, 4:211–26.

  8. JLC, 1:736, April 5, 1737.

  9. Stokes, Iconography, 4:552–54. NYWJ, June 27, 1737.

  10. CC to his wife, September 11, 1737, LPCC, 2:17. Docs. Col. NY, 3:292, September 12, 1737. On September 21 the Assembly voted that Cosby’s actions had not invalidated the election. This decision was followed by a contest over the Jewish vote, with William Smith arguing that Jewish New Yorkers, who had voted overwhelmingly for Philipse, ha
d no right to vote. Even with the Jewish votes thrown out, Van Horne still lost because the Assembly also voted to allow non-resident freeholders to vote.

  11. Although a Masonic manual printed in Philadelphia in 1734 promised that “A Mason is a peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers, wherever he resides or works, and is never to be concerned in Plots and Conspiracies against the Peace and Welfare of the Nation.” Constitutions of the FREE-MASONS (London, 1723; Philadelphia, 1734), p. 48.

  12. NYWJ, November 14, 1737.

  13. Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (Washington, DC: Masonic Service Association, 1924), p. 179.

  14. NYG, November 28, 1737.

  15. Masonry’s origins have been disputed, with some arguing for the importance of earlier lodges in Scotland, only later imported to England. See, e.g., David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). On mockery of Masonry in the British North American colonies, see David S. Shields, “Clio Mocks the Masons: Joseph Gren’s Anti-Masonic Satires,” in J. A. Leo Lemay, ed., Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), pp. 109–26; Robert Micklus, “The Secret Fall of Freemasonry in Dr. Alexander Hamilton’s ‘The History of the Tuesday Club,’ ” in Deism, Masonry, pp. 127–36.

  16. For a close examination of this story, see Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood:Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), chap. 2.

  17. NYWJ, June 29, 1741.

  18. MCC, 5:50, March 22, 1742.

  19. Hamilton, Gentleman’s Progress, p. 88.

  20. NYWJ, November 19, 1733.

  21. Journal of the Assembly, I:709 (September 8, 1737), 723 (November 16, 1737).

  22. NYG, August 17, 1730, September 14, 1730, and August 27, 1733. On slave artisans, see Foote, “Black Life,” pp. 41–44.